


Silberperlen

by JinjoJess



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Children of Characters, Comfort, F/F, Growing Old Together, Wife Squad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinjoJess/pseuds/JinjoJess
Summary: Wherein the Heroine Remembers to Close Her Hand
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dorothea Arnault/Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Dorothea Arnault/My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Silberperlen

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Dorothea!  
> As of posting, it should be 9/29 in most timezones now!
> 
> Blah, I'd been psyching myself up to write something really good for the occasion, but I'm just not the kind of person who can really keep to deadlines like fictional characters' birthdays. Alas. Instead, you get this heavily symbolic thing.
> 
> As always, Satomi = f!Byleth
> 
> (I should have more to say, but I literally finished work at 20:30 tonight and I. am. spent.)

_I'll let them believe I'm still asleep,_ Dorothea thinks, feeling the tips of Edelgard's fingers trace lines of warmth across the chilly flesh of her stomach. Satomi's breath is hot against her jaw, the edges of her teeth scraping Dorothea's skin, reminding her of a dog fussing with a favorite toy. She doesn't look at either of them, instead staring up at the embroidery of the bed's canopy.

Her heart beats steadily, keeping time like a metronome, and she feels as though, if she wanted to, she could burst into song--as if her voice will still ring as clearly as it did when she was young. It's only been in the last few years that its timbre has begun to fade; it has far outlasted the deep, rich chocolate of her hair.

Liver spots and wrinkles have started to claim Dorothea's once unmarred skin. Heidelinde finds her, the day before her birthday, trying to conceal a large, bruise-like mark on her shoulder with some new cosmetics from abroad. She wrinkles her nose at her.

"Auntie, only you would take this long to start showing your age," she teases. "My hair started going gray before yours."

Dorothea smiles, despite knowing that it won't fool Heidelinde. "You're under considerably more stress than I am, sweet roll. The duties of an elected leader aren't much different from those of an emperor, at least not from where I sit."

Heidelinde, ever modest, shrugs. She sits down on the upholstered bench and rests her head on Dorothea's bare shoulder.

"You still run the theater. That's stressful."

"Viola handles most of that now. I'd have thought you'd be aware of that? Though I suppose it's not like I kept track of every incremental advance in my wives' careers either." Dorothea reaches up to scratch Heidelinde's scalp. Her fingernail bumps against the small lump left from a childhood tick bite. The tick was long dead by now. "These days I don't have much to do really. I just wander around the palace grounds like a lonely ghost and annoy your mother and father."

A soft hum answers her. Dorothea counts the wrinkles on her own face in the mirror.

"The children love you, you know." For just a moment, resolute sadness washes over Heidelinde's reflected features. "You're a good grandma to them."

"Better than I've been a parent to you?"

"Of course not!"

She's touched a nerve, Dorothea realizes, seeing the familiar glint of emotion in her daughter's eyes.

"There's a reason Vi and I named our eldest Theodora. I picked out Adelaide's name, and then later Vi chose Sonya's, but Theo's name was from both of us. Because we agreed that the most important person in our lives was the same woman."

Dorothea closes her eyes, picturing how she'd used to look in her Garreg Mach uniform.

"My favorite parent and Vi's... Well, I know that your relationship with her isn't the same, and is more like...whatever you and Gramma had--"

"Friendship?"

"Does friendship normally entail the older person rescuing the younger one and changing the course of her life?"

"It does in these two specific cases, yes."

"You're Vi's hero, Auntie." Heidelinde's hand closes over Dorothea's. "And mine."

Dorothea opens her eyes, meeting her daughter's gaze in the mirror.

"Please don't do anything excessive tomorrow."

Heidelinde's grin exposes her teeth, reflecting the candlelight and making them look like glittering coins.

"No promises."

Her wives have realized she's awake. 

"Good morning, my love," Satomi whispers, stirring Dorothea's silver hair. It dances for the briefest of moments, and Dorothea imagines it as seaweed, swaying peacefully beneath the glassy surface of the ocean. "We get to be the same age for a few weeks again."

"Happy birthday, dearest," Edelgard says, resting her head squarely on Dorothea's collarbone. She releases a contented sigh.

This is nothing particularly special. For the most part, this is how she's woken up most days for the vast majority of her life.

Manuela had told her once, through the haze of mead, that the secret to happiness wasn't to stop thinking. It was to keep thinking, to keep noticing.

"Hold out your hand," she'd said, and when Dorothea had complied, she'd ripped the necklace from her neck and slapped as many pearls as she could keep track of into Dorothea's palm. "Don't look at your hand! Focus on the wall over there. Good. Now stay like that and don't move until I come back."

At that point Manuela had staggered out of the room, babbling about craving shrimp. 

Dorothea had frozen, staring at the unpainted wall opposite her. The pearls had rattled in her hand as she'd begun to tremble, both from the effort to remain entirely still and fear of being discovered.

What would the stage hands say if they were to find her, the greasy, gaunt street urchin interloper, standing in the star singer's dressing room with a handful of her pearls? The director and composer had sneered when Manuela had insisted on keeping Dorothea around; she couldn't imagine that they would waste such a perfect opportunity to be rid of her.

She'd had to rely on the basic breathing exercises Manuela had taught her a few days prior to fight off her panic. The clock behind her had ticked off the seconds, which piled into minutes and then into hours. The rest of the room had faded, aside from one small patch of stone wall where her eyes were focused.

Dawn had begun to bleed in through the windows by the time Manuela had returned, red splotches dotting the edges of her lips. Dorothea had hoped it was sauce.

"Still here!" Manuela had clapped happily, though her tone had been not at all surprised. "You didn't even drop any of the pearls."

"Any of the what?" Dorothea's mind had felt like a lazy cat being nudged out of a sunny windowsill. Like her body belonged to someone else. Not in the usual sense, but like her soul had drifted out of her physical self and hovered nearby all night. She'd barely been able to feel her own fingers.

Manulea had smiled at her. "Close your hand."

Dorothea had followed her orders--she always had, and always would--suddenly hyperaware of the pearls. She'd been able to feel each individual one, their texture and shape, recognizing that despite how they'd looked, they hadn't all been identical. Somehow, the minute imperfections had been the most exciting part, the idea that these pearls were unlike any other on earth. Manuela had studied her face intently, her smile growing deeper.

Without a word, Dorothea had reached out to hand the pearls back to Manuela, but she'd refused them.

"Keep them," she'd said. "Let them remind you to close your hand every so often and see what you're holding."

Dorothea measures her life in acts. Since the curtain has lifted, she's experienced several different ones, each comprised of individual scenes:

**Act I  
** _Wherein the Heroine Enters the Stage and Her Parents Exit_

**Act II  
** _Wherein the Heroine Fights for Survival in the Capital_

**Act III  
** _Wherein the Heroine is Rescued by her Benefactor and Makes a Name for Herself_

**Act IV  
** _Wherein the Heroine is Abandoned by her Benefactor and Falls into Melancholy_

**Act V  
** _Wherein the Heroine Goes on a Great Journey and Learns a Great Many Things and Meets Several Key People_

**Act VI  
** _The War_

**Act VII  
** _Wherein the Heroine Tastes a Bittersweet Despair_

**Act VIII  
** _Wherein the Heroine is Rewarded_

Dorothea has never expected Act VIII, the longest to date and with the greatest number of scenes, would have lasted to this point. She'd expected that it would have been followed by _Wherein the Heroine Falls from Grace,_ or _Wherein the Heroine is Cast Aside by her Lovers,_ or _Wherein the Heroine Succumbs to the Dreaded Melancholy,_ but instead it persisted. It held the most satisfying scenes, like The Wedding, The New Calling, The Birth of Sweet Roll, and The Birth of the Little Darlings.

"Another year together," Edelgard says, her voice muffled by Dorothea's breasts. 

"And many more to come," Satomi says, miming lifting a glass of ale. She kisses Dorothea on the cheek. "Don't you agree, D?"

Dorothea wraps her arms around her wives and closes her eyes. She can see them through the years, images stacked on top of one another like sheets of translucent paper. Their outlines and posture shift in each iteration, but their smiles stay aimed in her direction. Dorothea breathes deeply and squeezes Satomi and Edelgard.

"Yes," she says, opening her eyes and looking both of them directly in the face. "Many more."

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering, Satomi's "canon" birthday is November 19th, not the same as Byleth's.  
> She'll get a fic for her birthday as well.
> 
> For now it's time to work on Gaygirigetsu 2020...


End file.
